A LEGAL INNOVATION READING LIST FOR 2017

Legal innovation has been a hot topic for the last few years, and that’s great. Society benefits when lawyers and technologists get together to improve our legal system. It goes without saying that technology plays a huge role in this endeavor, but there is far more to the process of innovation than just throwing a bunch of technology at a problem. Legal innovators have to make something that people want.

The books below helped my own law firm’s legal innovation efforts. They are just a select few out of potentially hundreds of books written on startups and product development, but for someone new to legal innovation or innovation in general, they provide a solid starting point for understanding the central concepts and language around building a new and innovative business.

The common thread running through all of these books is that customers are central to innovation. The best technology and the best ideas are all worthless if customers are not interested in using the result. In some way, all of the books connect the idea of product/service innovation to understanding what customers want – and finding out who those customers are.